Friday, 30 March 2007

Not often enough though. I have way too many projects half done-Al 2.3 and 2.7 are staring at me as I write. I should have never given them faces. I know I have been kind of lazy and scattered for the last few years, I keep planning on rectifying that...well a vicious cycle ensues.

I just found a new and interesting site-mail me art. Buddy is amassing a pretty cool collection-I wouldn't want to sell them off. This just makes my mind start formulating yet more new plans for something to send-a box large enough to hold WMRC perhaps.

Saturday, 24 March 2007

Do not go gentle into that good night,Old age should burn and rave at close of day;Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,Because their words had forked no lightning theyDo not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how brightTheir frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sightBlind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on that sad height,Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.Do not go gentle into that good night.Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

I remember thinking how actively my dad embodied the command of this famous poem as he lay in his hospital bed. It's powerful refrain played in my mind as he fought for every slow breath that he could gasp, as his heart sluggishly pushed blood through his veins just one more time... If there ever was one to fight the dying of the light, he was the one. He lived for almost two years though his prognosis was for a few months. He just stubbornly held on.

My dad used to think he would die of a heart attack; "the Moores all have weak hearts" he'd say. His father and uncles all died when their weak hearts gave out on them. But he had a Smith heart, a strong one that fought like hell to continue beating. He was always more like his mother anyway. We told him as much as he lay there battling for another minute, another second. Obstinacy comes from the Smith side too.

It has been a year, and that strong Smith heart is probably worm food by now. However sad I may continue to be for existing in a world that does not include him, there is yet joy. Not just in knowing he is with Christ, finally knowing what it really is like to be perfect (and humble! I can't wait to see what that's like, heh) but his heart will one day beat strong again in a new body, in a new world. One that has been redeemed and freed from death, as surely as our foolish and darkened hearts have been.

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

Monday, 12 March 2007

Amazingly I'm not working (of course I did work until 7:30 this morning, but that was then...)

I found a new toy. Actually I found it awhile ago and circumspectly avoided it as I knew my rabid cataloguing tendencies would make themselves known and I'd be sitting for hours putting my collection in there. I saw it again and I think the tiredness made me forget that I didn't want to start this...You see my dad's collection is now my collection, and it probably numbers high in the hundreds, perhaps thousands. Don't believe?

I started cataloguing the small bookshelves in my computer/craft room, which are the easy part. They are here. But I still have:

The one on the left is mostly mama's books so not too much of a problem there as I won't add many of them. The one on the right contains largely father's books (and just look at how many more there are and how fat they are and how many of them have something to do with Winston Churchill. My dad used to do a pretty good Winston Churchill when he got to WWII with his grade 11s-We will nevah...surrender!...but I digress.)

This one is the really deceptive killer. It's like the community chest of bookdom, a hodge-podge. Floor to ceiling books of all types double shelved. Pull out a book and you find...another layer of books. It is wider than it looks also.

Notice the two Gage Canadian dictionaries? There is another one somewhere. This goes to show the extent of our bibliolatry. Only in the Moore household do we fill every available nook with books. And there are roughly five boxes of them out in the shed as well. My brother wanted to take some of them, but I denied that request as I knew he'd probably just sell them. He took away the ten-volume set of children's stories we used to have, insisting he should have it "because I have kids". Never mind that they live closer to me than to him. Though rest assured that if I am trolling on ebay one day and happen to see them, he will die.

Anyway, I probably won't get them all on there or even close to all on there, though it would be nice to have a catalogue of them all. I'll see how far I get before I get tired of it. I wonder if I should add dad's copy of Mein Kampf? Will that get me put on a "list"?

Thursday, 8 March 2007

When the madness of idolatry and irreligion filled the world and the knowledge of God was hidden, whose part was it to teach the world about the Father? Man's, would you say? But men cannot run everywhere over the world, nor would their words carry sufficient weight if they did, nor would they be, unaided, a match for the evil spirits. Moreover, since even the best of men were confused and blinded by evil, how could they convert the souls and minds of others? You cannot put straight in others what is warped in yourself.

Perhaps you will say, then, that creation was enough to teach men about the Father. But if that had been so, such great evils would never have occurred. Creation was there all the time, but it did not prevent men from wallowing in error.

Once more, then, it was the Word of God, Who sees all that is in man and moves all things in creation, Who alone could meet the needs of the situation. It was His part and His alone, Whose ordering of the universe reveals the Father, to renew the same teaching.

But how was He to do it? By the same means as before, perhaps you will say, that is, through the works of creation. But this was proven insufficient. Men had neglected to consider the heavens before, and now they were looking in the opposite direction.

Wherefore, in all naturalness and fitness, desiring to do good to men, as Man He dwells, taking to Himself a body like the rest; and through His actions done in that body, as it were on their own level, He teaches those who would not learn by other means to know Himself, the Word of God, and through Him the Father.

On the Incarnation, book 3

While I had always particularly favoured the section directly preceding this part, as I read this bit again I was struck by the power of it. Ah the Word.

It was the Christian teaching of man's sinfulness and total inability that convinced me Christianity was true all those years ago (and as I continue to feel the warping of such a nature, it still does). Man can't discover the knowledge of God, nor can he find God in creation. Rather, God found us in revealing to us his Word-and the Word made flesh.And people wonder why I would be perfectly willing to name a child Athanasius :)